Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.

Dogs are the closest we come to knowing the divine love of God on this side of eternity.

... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]

Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos.

Nothing heals us like letting people know our scariest parts: When people listen to you cry and lament, and look at you with love, it's like they are holding the baby of you.

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

I thought the secret of life was obvious: be here now, love as if your whole life depended on it, find your life's work, and try to get hold of a giant panda.

Human lives are hard, even those of health and privilege, and don't make much sense. This is the message of the Book of Job: Any snappy explanation of suffering you come up with will be horseshit.

Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear -- and doubt.

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

What I am seeking is not the real and not the unreal but rather the unconscious, the mystery of the instinctive in the human race.

When you can see your unborn children in her arms, you know you really love a woman.

I've learned that when someone does something very kind and refuses payment, giving them an engraved Swiss Army knife is never refused!

I'm not a bad guy! I work hard, and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I'm going to Hell?

I want the people who came to listen to have a good time as well. So it's a matter of playing a control game when all I really want to do is go out there and sing.

Take a deep breath and take this to heart; God has nothing to do with broken promises. When He says, I promise, mark it down it's going to happen.

A twinge of conscience is a glimpse of God.

It's beginnings that are hard. I always begin with a great sense of dread and trepidation. Nietzsche says that the decision to start writing is like leaping into a cold lake.